Sor Suplicios, here possessed by Linda Blair (screenshot)The general mood was a little lighter this week. Doesn't this photo look upbeat? But it's far too soon for the eventual happy ending to be an immediate prospect.
I don't know how the telenovela is doing in the American ratings. But I did see a Croatian magazine on Sunday that featured Marlene Favola as Esmeralda on the cover. So it's apparently finding a wide audience.
Hermana Sor Suplicios had another bout of stark raving lunacy this week. And it was a good one! She set up María Pia and el Gobernador for a tryst and their old favorite cabin and was leading the visiting cardinal there to expose what she thinks is their illicit romance. But she's been seeing an escaped African slave in the bushes lately. He's asking for her help, but she thinks he's El Demonio (the Devil). She sees him again on the way to the cabin with the cardinal and freaks out, leaving some lurid scratch marks on the cardinal's face.
Back at the convent, the cardinal performs an exorcism rite while she writhes in bed. When María Pia comes into the room, she starts going all Linda Blair on us. She sits up on her knees and harangues María Pia in a rasping voice about going off to be with her lover. No 360-degree head turns or green vomit yet. But what's not to like about Sor Suplicios going bonkers with a demon possession?
Once is not enough: the possessed (or just plain nutty) Sor Suplicios faces María Pia (screenshot)Diego made it out of the church safely with Esmeralda. Bernardo appears in public disguised as Zorro as they are escaping, and the hapless Tobías is also seen in Zorro costume. That blew the charges that el Comandante Montero had made against Diego.
Although the couple escape and go do the Wild Thang in the woods, Esmeralda decides on her own to go back to Montero after Montero threatens Diego's whole household. This naturally perturbs Diego no end. Esmeralda holds Montero at gunpoint and makes him sign a decree exonerating Diego and his family of all charges.
Things are looking kind of bad for Esmeralda at that point. But then a powerful friend of the De la Vega family shows up, the Marquesa Carmen Santillana. Padre Tomás, we learn, secretly summoned her to help. The Marquesa didn't like Montero much to begin with, it seems. Then he made a play for one of her nieces and that didn't make her happy at all. So at a party in her honor at Alejandro's haciendo, the Marquesa orders Montero to annul his marriage with Esmeralda.
Which is good news in itself. Unfortunately, Esmeralda's scheming Jezebel of a half-sister Mariángel (who's not biologically even a half sister, but that's what she thinks she is) goes after Diego. She finds him drunk and gets him to drink lots more. Then she slips him a mickey in the form of her native love potion, which seems to function more as knockout drops.
But it works well enough for her to get Diego into her bed, where Almudena and el Gobernador discover them seemingly naked. So at the end of capítulo 30, el Gobernador is demanding that Diego marry Mariángel, a fate which would probably be better than being tortured to death in Montero's prison. But probably not by much.
I see some severe moments of sibling rivalry between Esmeralda and Mariángel coming over the near horizon.
Teresa Gutierrez as the Marquesa did a great job playing a powerful, vital old lady with a wicked sense of humor.
See also my previous Zorro post and the Zorro telenovela Web site and the Zorro telenovela Web site, Zorro: la Espada y la Rosa (Telemundo).
Tags: marlene favela, zorro
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